Fay Alexander, 75, Former Trapeze Artist

October 4, 2000|The New York Times

Fay Alexander, who soared to stardom as one of the few trapeze artists to execute a triple somersault and who performed the aerial maneuvers for movie characters played by Tony Curtis, Doris Day and others, died on July 16 at his home in Sarasota.

He was 75.

The cause was lung cancer, his wife, Rose, said. When he died, the only report of his death in the United States was a brief obituary in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Mr. Alexander first performed the triple in 1952, while he was working for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

In doing the triple, an aerialist catapults off a swinging trapeze, doubles up into three dizzying, pinwheel-like spins and snaps out into the arms of an upside-down acrobat, called the catcher. According to circus legend, the triple has killed more performers than all other aerial acts combined.

In an article on Mr. Alexander in True magazine in April 1953, Bill Ballantine wrote that the next four men and one woman to try the triple died.

Fay Alexander was born in Seattle in 1924, the son of a barber, according to A Reckless Era of Aerial Performance: The Evolution of Trapeze, by Steve Gossard. He grew up in Los Angeles. At 3, he contracted a lung disease and was sent to dancing school as physical therapy. He learned ballet and acrobatics. He began to perform in theaters and clubs along the Pacific Coast.

During the war, when he was in the Coast Guard, he performed as an acrobat with Rudy Vallee's show, and later appeared in the Stars and Bars show with Sid Caesar and Victor Mature. He then served eight months of sea duty.

After leaving the service, he began performing in 1947 with Ted Dewayne in a Risley act, the acrobatic art of juggling objects -- and sometimes people -- with one's feet. He and Dewayne then bought some secondhand gear and taught themselves aerial tricks, performing as the Dewayne Brothers.

Mr. Alexander toured South America with Jerry Wilson's Flying Behrs and returned to work with a circus that Dewayne had organized. He met Rose Lamont, a trick rider, in 1948, married her and trained her for the trapeze act.

The next year, he began working for Barnum, achieving the triple in a 1952 performance. After a severe fall in 1953, his wife finally won her argument that he should go to barber school. After graduating, he joined his father's shop in California.

But he soon returned to the circus, going from one to the next, and formed his own group, the Flying Alexanders.

His film career, which started in 1951 when he acted as a double for Cornel Wilde in Cecil B. DeMille's Greatest Show on Earth, began to pick up. In that movie, he made a spectacular fall into a hidden net.

Mr. Alexander also performed for Tony Curtis in the 1955 film Trapeze and doubled for Martha Raye and Doris Day in Jumbo in 1962. In The Big Circus in 1959, he did the stunts for Gilbert Roland.